Heirloom Home

Student's Ties With W&m Go Back 200 Years

WILLIAMSBURG — Erich Tucker Kimbrough doesn't always use his middle name, but he does use it.

You'll find it on the masthead of the William and Mary Law Review, where he just finished a term as editor in chief.

``I don't throw it around with people or try to gain influence with it,'' Kimbrough said. ``It's something I'm proud of, though.''

Proud because the Tuckers and William and Mary go way back together. More than 200 years back.

Kimbrough's great-great-great-great grandfather, St. George Tucker, was the school's second law professor, a position he held from 1790 to 1804. From there, an almost steady stream of Tuckers have graduated from William and Mary, including Kimbrough's father and two sisters.

``You can go back up the chain, and in every generation, there's at least one person who's attended,'' Kimbrough said.

Kimbrough is in his third year at the Marshall-Wythe School of Law. He said family ties to William and Mary were the determining factor in his decision to come to law school here, but they weren't enough to draw him to Williamsburg as an undergraduate. Kimbrough went to the University of Georgia instead.

``To an extent, that was an act of rebellion,'' Kimbrough said. ``But I entered law school at the age of 30. So I would hope that my rebellious days are over.''

From birth, Kimbrough was steeped in his family's long and close relationship with Williamsburg and the college. As a child growing up in Georgia, he regularly visited his grandmother, Janet Kimbrough, who lived in St. George's sprawling house on Nicholson Street overlooking Market Square in the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's historic area.

Janet Kimbrough's father, George Coleman, a former highway commissioner for whom the bridge over the York River is named, sold the family house to Colonial Williamsburg but retained the right for him and his children to live there the rest of their lives. Janet Kimbrough was the second-to-last Tucker to live in St. George's house.

The last was Erich Tucker Kimbrough. His grandmother died in July 1992, just before he came to William and Mary. Colonial Williamsburg gave the family a year to clean out the house and let Kimbrough live there during his first year of law school. He slept in St. George Tucker's four-poster bed, where, he says, Lafayette slept during a visit to Williamsburg in the 1820s.

``It's a nice bed,'' he said. ``It was comfortable.''

The house, however, wasn't always comfortable. The old heating system sometimes gave out, and air conditioning was minimal. Friends sometimes came over to study, but it wasn't the sort of place you felt comfortable hanging out.

And there was all that ancestry to deal with.

``There was definitely sort of a spiritual force that was compelling me through law school,'' Kimbrough said. ``There were times at night I felt the scrutiny of eight generations of ancestors.''

The Tuckers had been pack rats, Kimbrough said, and the family needed the year to sift through ``200 years of junk'' they had accumulated in St. George's house. Some of that junk had become priceless antiques, so the family had to be careful not to casually throw anything away.

The St. George Tucker House is now empty, awaiting restoration and conversion into a hospitality center for Colonial Williamsburg donors. St. George's four-poster bed is now at an aunt's house in Saluda.

And Kimbrough now lives in a reconstructed kitchen building behind the Tucker house. On his walls are some prints that came from St. George's house and a charcoal drawing of St. George himself, in profile, a reminder to Kimbrough of his roots.

Kimbrough will work for a judge in Cincinnati after he graduates, then plans to practice law. He cherishes his ancestry but knows it will have little bearing on his success.

``More than anything else, it's just interesting,'' he said. ``In a real sense, it doesn't get you a whole lot.''